Rockabilly royalty Wanda Jackson to have party in Ann Arbor

Dress fringe flyin’, strings twangin’, and that gutsy voice — Wanda Jackson was the original girl with a guitar.

Wanda Jackson will play at the Ann Arbor Summer Festival on June 15. Photo Courtesy Jon Hensley Management, Publicity and New Media

It was the King of Rock and Roll who suggested the country singer give the next big thing a shot. Jackson toured with Elvis Presley in 1955.

“He’s the one who encouraged me to try the rockabilly music, and once I did, I felt like I’d found a home,” Jackson said. “He said there’s no girls singing this kind of music. At that point, it was him, Jerry Lee [Lewis], Carl Perkins, Buddy Holly and those guys.

“So he said if you want to sell a lot of records, you need to be doing this kind of music. He said the kids now are the ones that have a voice in what’s being played on the radio. … I told him, ‘I can’t sing a song like you do; I’m just a country singer.’ He said, ‘No, you can do it, and you need to be doing it.’ So that was my push that I needed.”

The 17-year-old — and her dad who accompanied the young singer on the road — listened.

Coincidentally, her 1960 signature tune, “Let’s Have a Party,” was recorded by Presley in 1957.

She was a guest at a memorable bash to celebrate a milestone in 2009.

“I think that the induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame had to be the highlight so far in my life and in my career,” Jackson said during a call from her Oklahoma City home. “I’m getting now to enjoy the fruit of my labor back then.”

Simplicity of the music keeps people movin’ and groovin’, she believes.

“If a kid or a person can play three chords on a guitar and you learn three chords, you can sing rockabilly,” Jackson said and laughed. “Boy, I do know that young adults around the world are loving the music that we made in the mid ’50s.”

And the queen of rockabilly keeps recording. She worked with Jack White for 2011′s “The Party Ain’t Over” and with Justin Townes Earle for 2012′s “Unfinished Business.”

“I can’t talk about details right now, but I’ll be in studio probably by the end of the summer, and early next year we’ll have a release,” she said.

Jackson will play at 8 p.m. June 15 at Hill Auditorium. She is opening for Cake as part of the Ann Arbor Summer Festival, a2sf.org. Tickets range from $40 to $60.

“There’s just nothing that can take the place of the energy and the love that the fans have for you when you hit that stage,” she said. “It doesn’t matter if you’re very nervous, a little nervous or what, the minute you get into a song and see the faces of your fans out there, it’s just smooth sailing.”

This entry was posted
on Monday, June 9th, 2014 at 12:15 pm and is filed under Music, Star.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

MUSIC

Peter Wolf to sing, share stories in Ann Arbor

It was Peter Blankfield’s grandmother who gave the rowdy youngster growing up in the Bronx his nickname: “Little Wolf.”

“She was the lady who gave me my first cigarette, my first taste of whiskey, and she brought me to the theater,” he said of Anna, who was an actress in New York City’s Yiddish Theater. “She had a great influence on me. She was somebody who sort of steered me in the direction that I’m in now.”

Peter Wolf

And that term of endearment became his stage name — eventually.

“I started as a painter and painted all my life, and I always was a music fan. And then when I came to Boston to study painting, I had a roommate — his name was David Lynch — he decided to go into filmmaking, and I decided to go into music,” he said.

Wolf became a star as the passionate lead singer with a penchant for fast-talking storytelling in The J. Geils Band. With that energetic frontman, the group’s live shows became legendary.

Think of “Must of Got Lost” with Wolf’s epic intro, complete with “Woofa Goofa with the green teeth.”

“We used to go through Cleveland and Detroit with The J. Geils Band; just being able to connect with the audiences and having audiences remain loyal throughout the years is a meaningful thing for someone that does what I do,” the singer-songwriter said.

His love of music was influenced by a concert organized by DJ Alan Freed he saw when he was 10.

“At that show was Jerry Lee Lewis; Little Richard; Chuck Berry; Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers; Buddy Holly; The Everly Brothers; Screamin’ Jay Hawkins; Jo Ann Campbell, the Blonde Bombshell; Dion and the Belmonts; and Dicky Doo and The Don’ts. So I was baptized into rock ’n’ roll at a very early age,” he recalled during a call from Boston.

“Seeing that show, it was pretty hard to beat. When I look back at it, the remarkable thing is I remember every performer and I don’t necessarily remember the exact songs they did, but I remember all the different performers; it just stayed with me all my life.”

The Detroit Cobras to shimmy into Frankie’s

Rachel Nagy can sniff out vintage vinyl. The lead singer of The Detroit Cobras loves pawing through the stacks.

“One of the great things about Detroit is that unlike New York or someplace where you have a million hipsters going over everything, you can always find [music] laying around in flea markets, record stores,” she said. “You spend a lot of hours on your hands and knees going through dirty bins.”

Fronted by Nagy and guitarist Mary Ramirez, The Detroit Cobras are known for covers of obscure rock, R&B and soul.

“It’s cool to dig up this stuff from a time when people might put out one single and that was it. Just like now, if you don’t get it to the right person or you didn’t slip somebody the payola, nobody hears it. There’s a wealth of stuff out there — just like now — some of that buried stuff that wasn’t a big hit is better than what was,” Nagy said.

Last year, The Detroit Cobras recorded “Heartbeat” for the tribute disc, “Rave On Buddy Holly.”

“Paul McCartney was on [the tribute disc], a bunch of people like that. We were the only band I’d never heard of,” Nagy said and laughed.

The singer known for powerful vocals puts herself into every song.

The Detroit Cobras, from left, Mary Ramirez and Rachel Nagy.

“I’m not a really mushy, romantic person, so it’s kind of fun — like putting on a party dress if you don’t usually wear one — and kind of live vicariously, like yeah, I’m really going to sit in the bathroom and cry my eyes out over a boy,” Nagy said then laughed. “That’s really not how I am, so it’s fun to be able to try that role and enjoy it vicariously.”

A former butcher and stripper, Nagy never dreamed of being a singer.

“My friends just needed someone to get up and sing; they got me drunk enough to do it,” she said during a phone interview from her Nashville home.

That was 17 years ago, when the group formed in Motown. Since then, Nagy and Ramirez have rounded out the lineup with an ever-changing roster of musicians and released four discs, including “Tied & True” on Bloodshot Records in 2007.

The Detroit Cobras will play 9 p.m. March 24 at Frankie’s Inner City, 308 Main St. Tickets are $13 in advance and $15 night of the show. Opening will be Romans and Matt Truman Ego Trip.

“People forget how fun it is just to have a couple beers, dance with a pretty girl and just have a good time and not think so hard about everything. That’s pretty much the goal,” Nagy said.